On Tuesday, March 25, Rumeysa Ozturk, a 30-year-old doctoral student from Turkey, was taken by masked plainclothes officers on the streets of Somerville, Massachusetts. She was on her way to meet friends to break her Ramadan fast.

Ozturk’s lawyer has said she was not charged with a crime. It appears she was detained because of an article she wrote in the Tufts student newspaper, calling on the administration to divest from Israel in the wake of its war with Hamas in Gaza. This has been a key demand of student groups across the country protesting Israel’s actions that have killed more than 50,000 people and wounded more than 100,000.

Ozturk’s arrest and detention are part of a broader push from the Trump administration to revoke the visas of students it deems “pro-Hamas” or “pro-jihad.” The administration has received assistance in identifying students who have participated in pro-Palestinian protests from right-wing pro-Israeli groups and through the questionable use of facial-recognition software.

These incidents and the Trump administration’s justification for them highlight at least two crucial questions, one legal and another political. For people who follow Jesus, those questions and their answers are merely incidental.

The first question centers on whether the First Amendment right to free speech applies to non-citizens who are in the country legally. The issue has been vigorously debated for decades, but the Supreme Court’s case law precedent appears to be “yes.”

In 1939, the government began deportation proceedings against Harry Bridges, an Australian citizen in the U.S. on a work visa. He was charged with being a member of the Communist Party. Bridges’ lawyers argued that he had been denied due process, raising the question of whether non-citizens have the right to due process.

The court decided they did. In a concurring opinion, Justice Francis W. Murphy went a step further, writing that “once an alien lawfully enters and resides in this country, he [sic] becomes invested with the rights guaranteed by the Constitution to all people within our borders.”

Murphy added, “Such rights include those protected by the First and the Fifth Amendments and by the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. None of these provisions acknowledges any distinction between citizens and resident aliens.”

Subsequent court cases have affirmed the Constitutional rights of non-citizens who reside in the United States.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio has sidestepped this question, claiming that, regardless of whether First Amendment rights extend to non-citizens, there is no Constitutional right to a student Visa.

The political question Ozturk’s case raises is one we’ve been dancing around and fighting over for decades: Does advocating for the dignity and fundamental human rights of Palestinians make one a terrorist sympathizer?

This is a far more challenging conversation to have. Not because there isn’t a simple, factual answer. There is. It is difficult because so many of us have been conditioned to believe and parrot the lie, which is that anyone who offers a substantial critique of Israel’s brutal actions is antisemitic.

The tragedy is that many of those who perpetuate this belief know it is a lie. But it is a useful lie, allowing for all manner of occupation, oppression and horror.

These questions will pervade the media over the coming months and years. But for those of us who claim the Bible as a source of guidance, they take a back seat to the moral imperatives that our faith requires of us.

As an American, I believe that First Amendment rights are essential. As a world citizen, keeping brutal regimes at bay is vital. But as a Christian, the imperative toward hospitality for the stranger is nonnegotiable.

The Levitical law that evangelicals love to pick and choose from is clear: “The foreigner residing among you must be treated as your native-born” (Leviticus 19:34). This answers the question of what sorts of activities we allow of our guests. If we can speak out against Israeli horrors against the Palestinian people without retribution, then so can they.

Of course, there are many more scriptural directives. From the commandment of Jesus to love our neighbors as much as we love ourselves to the numerous parables he used to demonstrate that point, the Bible is not silent on the issue of hospitality. 

We are not (nor should we be) a “Christian nation.” But if such a thing existed, our silence regarding Rumeysa Ozturk and other students living in fear would be a crime.

Supporting or turning a blind eye to the fear and hatred being perpetuated against U.S. international students is against the tenets of every major faith tradition and is, quite literally, anti-Christ.